No injuries were reported after a clothes dryer caught fire Monday at the Chilton County Jail.

“It looked worse than what it was,” Clanton Fire Department Captain Kevin Driver said. “I am 100 percent sure it was accidental.”

Firefighters with CFD responded to a call of a fire at the jail shortly after 3 p.m.

Once firefighters were on scene, they found a commercial clothes dryer burning in the laundry room.

Driver said the clothes dryer is used to dry all of the inmates’ jail uniforms and at the time of the fire had clothes burning inside the dryer.

“We aren’t sure if the dryer was overloaded or if it got too hot,” Driver said. “It just malfunctioned.”

The portion of the jail where the fire occurred was not near the area where inmates are housed.

“The area that caught on fire was near the kitchen and the booking area,” Driver said. “The housing units never got a lot of smoke.”

Driver said the dryer and the vent to the dryer were both burning which created a large amount of smoke surrounding the jail.

“When we pulled up we thought it was a lot worse than what it ended up being,” Driver said. “The lent on the inside of the vent was actually burning. Within 10 minutes we had the fire out, but there was a lot of smoke. We are just thankful no one was injured.”